Many networking environments employ multiple communications network adapters or multi-port network adapters. These environments are able to utilize various technologies to exploit the multiple physical links created by the multiple adapters, thereby achieving high network availability, reliability, and performance. Among these technologies are Cisco's EtherChannel, the industrial standard 802.3ad, and Ethernet Bonding for LINUX. One major drawback of these technologies is that they are often designed and implemented specifically for Ethernet. As the emergence of new interconnect technologies such as InfiniBand starts to effect the replacement of the Ethernet infrastructure, the existing Ethernet only solutions are not sufficient. Additionally, these technologies are currently only implemented for a single adapter type, such as Ethernet. Therefore, the network environment generally cannot comprise network adapters of different types.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.